US stocks slide amid escalating tariff fallout

(NEW YORK) — U.S. stocks continued their slide in early trading on Friday, just hours after China announced retaliatory tariffs in response to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” levies.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 925 points, or 2.25%, while the S&P 500 dropped 2.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 3%.

On Friday, China said it will impose 34% tariffs in response to the levies issued by Trump earlier this week.

In a social media post hours later, Trump signaled a commitment to the tariff policy.

“TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” Trump said on Truth Social.

All three major American stock markets closed down on Thursday, marking their worst day since June 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NASDAQ fell 6%, the S&P 500 4.8% and the Dow Jones nearly 4%

Global markets gave early signals of the difficulty to come on Friday. Japan’s Nikkei index lost 3.5% on Friday, while the broader Japanese Topix index fell 4.45%.

In South Korea, the KOSPI index was down 1.7%, with the country grappling with both Trump’s tariffs and the news that South Korea’s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Indian investors joined the sell-off on Friday, with the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex indexes both falling more than 1%. India’s stock markets had previously performed better than others thanks to lower tariffs than competitors like China, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Australia’s S&P/ASX, meanwhile, continued its slide into Friday with another 2% drop taking the index to an 8-month low.

In Europe, too, stock markets fell upon opening. Britain’s FTSE 100 index dropped more than 1%, Germany’s DAX fell 0.75%, France’s CAC lost 0.9% and Spain’s IBEX slipped 1.4%.

Trump’s Wednesday announcement of tariffs on nearly all American trade partners sent U.S. and foreign markets alike into a tailspin.

ABC News’ Leah Sarnoff, Max Zahn, Victor Ordoñez and Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.